I’ve been watching them this week. Today I watched about 45 minutes when my firstborn was 2.5. My heart clinches and I just miss him that age so much…why was it so exhausting then? I find I can only watch them by myself maybe once a year, as I get so sad. When I watch with the kids, we laugh and laugh…,it’s fun then. But for some reason today, the house so quiet, I wanted to visit my little guy. No wonder everyone gets excited to be a grandparent.
We pull them out every few years and watch a few. Until I get them transferred to digital, it’s too time consuming to watch them all. I also enjoy watching together, but feel more emotional watching them alone. It’s bittersweet. I love the adults they are now, but I miss the sweet, chubby-cheeked, smiley kids they were then.
Not often enough! And I totally understand the emotion, conmama. I had two easy babies and their babyhood was a blissful time I indeed miss very much.
Never. They are all VHS and we no longer have a VHS player.
We had our tapes digitally upgraded and the kids love them! We also have the tv on a family album slide show to see our little guys frequently. It’s actually a pretty embarrassing hit with kids’ friends when they are over.
DIL digitized all our home movies so she and S1 could have them, so we now have them on both VHS and a flash drive. We watched them some while she was doing it, but haven’t watched them much lately. It’s fun to look back at when the kids were little.
We only have one or two videos. We bought a number of video cameras, but rarely used them. But the day we stupidly bought one of them, my then six year old daughter happened to come into the house and asked her father to remove the training wheels from her bike. He went out and did that and happened to have the camera in his pocket (despite it’s size, LOL). He got her on video figuring out the final bits of balance and steering, then successfully riding it toward him. The cutest part was when he got her tossing her training wheels into the big garbage can outside. She looked up at him with her tilted helmet, floopy hair, and the biggest smile of accomplishment. It was a fun moment.
Sorry you are missing your little guy @conmama. Some days are like that. The videos are a nice way to visit him the way he was.
We don’t have any, so never. 
We were the slacker parents who hated schlepping the video camera with us. It was heavy and huge. The few videos we did take we never got digitized so no way to watch them even if we wanted. The one I really should get done is the one taken when we picked S up at the airport after his flight over from S.Korea.
I watch them when I’m on the treadmill because it’s something that holds my interest and there’s no commercials.
Husband recently digitalized all of them, and then we watched each one to be sure it had converted correctly. Such fun! Also fun to see how my decorating style changed over the years.
Husband then transferred a copy of each into a USB flash drive and gave one to each of the kids. He also emailed copies of all to kids and me. I can watch them on my laptop whenever I want.
It’s really fun seeing them as toddlers. Remember when we all wondered what our kids would grow up to be? Well now we know, and it makes some scenes even more fun!!!
I don’t watch the videos often, but I have all the pictures (at least those that are digital, which is most of them) on a random slide show screen saver on my computer, so I see different old photos all the time.
Those who haven’t digitized those videos: you still can. I recently found an old super 8 (I think) film my father took in about 1960 that I had digitized. Wow! Video of long-gone relatives we’d never seen film of before.
Costco had no problem with digitizing our old 16 mm movies.
I had a company transfer my VHS tapes to DVD several years ago. It looks like I need to have them digitized now. How does Walmart or Costco do that?
What? The DVDs we made aren’t good enough anymore?
Mr. B had no problems with using Costco-generated DVDs to create a few YouTube videos. That is as digital as it gets. Lol.
Let me just say I hope they haven’t disintegrated. :-<
Never. They were bulky VHS that we never updated
VHS tapes will degrade over time. Apparently, DVDs will too. Ultimately, you want to have everything in a digital backup.
Hmmm, we have rarely ever watched any of them and not digitized any of them either. Yikes! Sounds like more money or time!
Never now. Used to watch them all the time at night when every one else was in bed! I loved watching them. Now it might just make me, yes happy, but also a bit sad.